ABUJA- WIFE of the Former Senate President, Toyin Saraki, has donated breastfeeding equipment to four States, Lagos, Kwara, Kaduna States and the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja, to help healthcare facilities provide optimal neonatal intensive care feeding for premature and sick infants, and also to ensure fragile neonates benefit from the immunity provided from colostrums, which serves as the first immunity for newborns.

This was disclosed by Saraki on her visit during the World Breastfeeding Week 2019 to the maternity services of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, London, United Kingdom, UK, where she met with senior staff of the organization, including Medical Director, Zoe Penn, Interim Director Midwifery, Victoria Cochrane, Medical Director, Women’s Services, Gubby Ayida, and Fundraising Director, ‘CW +’, Kerry Huntington, which acts as the official charity of the NHS Foundation Trust.

Saraki discussed how the 12,000 women a year who give birth at the Foundation, and how they were cared for in a midwifery-led system which also provides an obstetric model of care, including specialist support for more complex pregnancies and health conditions with a foetal medicine unit. She said: “This week the Foundation donated breastfeeding equipment to the Neonatal Intensive Care Units of medical facilities in Lagos, Kwara and Kaduna States and Abuja, to help healthcare facilities provide optimal neonatal intensive care feeding for premature and sick infants, ensuring that fragile neonates may more easily benefit from the immunity provided from colostrums, which serves as the first immunity for newborns. “I commend the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust for its superb, midwife-led maternity care. I was struck today not only by the excellent standards that women can expect at the hospital but also by the culture of respect that is ubiquitous amongst staff. “I am impressed to observe the workings of primary, secondary and tertiary specialist referrals providing an unbroken continuum of maternity care, as an essential core of universal health coverage services.

“At the Wellbeing Foundation Africa, our MamaCare midwives also lead the way with quality care, saving many lives and helping women and infants to thrive. I look forward to working with the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust to share research bench to bedside best-practice models of maternity services, and bring the best possible standards of care to women all over the world – no matter where they give birth.” Meanwhile, she (Saraki) revealed that her foundation, Wellbeing Foundation Africa, WFA, is to partner with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine’s Centre for Maternal and Newborn Health’s Emergency Management of Obstetric And Newborn Care Simulation Skills Programme in Nigeria. “The Wellbeing Foundation Africa will partner with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine’s Centre for Maternal and Newborn Health’s Emergency Management of Obstetric And Newborn Care Simulation Skills Programme in Nigeria.  We have invited the School to visit the hospital”, she said.